CPW honors the recipients of its annual Vision Awards

CPW is proud to announce the recipients of its 2025 CPW Vision Awards. Each of the honorees has had a significant impact on the field of photography, and will be celebrated in person at a dinner event on May 10, 2025, at CPW’s new headquarters at 25 Dederick Street in Kingston. These are the honorees:

Lifetime Achievement: Sally Mann
Photographer of the Year: Tyler Mitchell
Saltzman Prize for Emerging Photographer: Qiana Mestrich
Photobook of the Year: I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now (Aperture)

Sally Mann is one of the most distinguished photographers working today. For over 40 years, her lyrical, black-and-white depictions of family and nature have evoked the psychology of loss, the intimacy of young womanhood, and the way Southern landscapes have retained the scars of war. Tyler Mitchell is renowned for his vibrant, playfully theatrical compositions that foreground the style and beauty of Black subjects, often within pastoral landscapes and familiar domestic settings. Qiana Mestrich’s innovative collages conceptualize and illuminate the historical challenges of women of color in the corporate workplace. And the path-breaking book I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now, edited by Pauline Vermare and Lesley A. Martin, provides an electrifying expansion of our understanding of the generative role of women in Japanese photography and photo history.




Sally Mann
Photographer Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) is known for her evocative black-and-white depictions of young womanhood, landscape, family, and illness. Mann’s mastery of traditional photographic processes evokes the saturated history of the American Southern landscape and her subjects’ interior states of being. Her series Immediate Family (1984-91), featuring portraits of her children, brought her broad recognition. Her studies of the American South and the human condition are the focus of recent works, including her series Deep South (2005) and Proud Flesh (2009). Her bestselling memoir, Hold Still (2016), was a National Book Award finalist. Mann’s awards include a Guggenheim fellowship and three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. Her work has been exhibited internationally at major museums and galleries, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has published several books of her photography, including At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women (1988), Immediate Family (1992), and What Remains (2003).
All about Sally Mann




Tyler Mitchell
Tyler Mitchell (American, b. 1995), is a photographer and filmmaker whose images reflect and celebrate the beauty and intimacies of Black American life, centering Black self-determination in the light of history. At an early age he began documenting the skate, music, fashion, and youth culture scenes in Atlanta. In 2018, he made history as the first Black photographer to shoot a cover of Vogue with his notable portrait of Beyoncé. Recent projects include I Can Make You Feel Good (2019), An Imaginative Arrangement of the Things Before Me (2021), and Idyllic Space (2024). In the past year, Mitchell had a survey exhibition at C /O Berlin, a dramatic dual exhibition alongside works by Richard Avedon at Paris Photo, and a solo exhibition titled Ghost Images at Gagosian Gallery in New York City (on view through April 5). He was a 2020 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellow, and has exhibited his work at Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, the International Center of Photography in New York, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Mitchell’s work is held in such museums as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the High Museum of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery.



Qiana Mestrich – Saltzman Prize Winner
Qiana Mestrich (American, b. 1977) is an interdisciplinary artist, photo historian, curator, and writer. Her autobiographical artwork and research engages issues around Black and mixed-race identity, motherhood/mothering, and women’s corporate labor. Her innovative collages restore the role of women of color in the corporate workplace by mixing together imagery of office supplies and furniture with women’s faces. In 2007, she founded the legendary blog Dodge & Burn: Decolonizing Photography History, an arts initiative that advocates for photographers of color. Mestrich’s book Decolonization and Diversity in Contemporary Photography: The Dodge & Burn Interviews, based on the blog, was published in March by Routledge. In 2022, Mestrich was awarded the Magnum Foundation Counter Histories grant for her @WorkingWOC Instagram archive project on women of color in the corporate workplace.

Mestrich is an adjunct faculty in photography and social media at the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY). The Saltzman Prize recognizes the extraordinary achievements of an emerging photographer whose recent work has garnered wider visibility and whose distinctive voice contributes fresh perspectives to the ongoing dialogue surrounding photography and visual culture. As the recipient of the Saltzman Prize, Mestrich will receive a $10,000 cash award, the 2025 CPW Vision Award for Emerging Photographer, and a solo exhibition of her work at CPW in 2026.


Tyler Mitchell
I’m So Happy You Are Here
I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now (Aperture)
Women photographers like Miyako Ishiuchi, Toyoko Tokiwa, and Rinko Kawauchi transformed postwar Japanese photography but were often overshadowed by their male counterparts. This important new publication, I’m So Happy You Are Here (Aperture), presents a challenge to historical precedents and the established canon of Japanese photography by providing a comprehensive overview of the contributions of Japanese women to photography. Editors Pauline Vermare and Lesley A. Martin have compiled a critical framework for understanding the historical and contemporary photography work. In addition to three richly illustrated essays, the book contains 25 detailed portfolios, an in-depth illustrated bibliography, and a selection of key critical writings from leading Japanese critics, many published in translation for the first time. This book is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in a revisionist history of Japanese photography.


Tyler Mitchell